Articles and Other Materials

Regardless of one’s opinion of Steve Bannon’s White House legacy, he stated the military conundrum that is North Korea well: “’Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

One solution to the siege of Seoul comes to mind: a large scale, methodical evacuation of residents willing to leave northern Seoul and the towns above it to get them out of the range of Kim Jong Un’s conventional artillery.

Greater Seoul has a population of about 30 million. According to an admittedly outdated estimate, it appears that the northern third of Seoul is in range of these guns, perhaps 10 million people. By this account, the southern part of the city is largely out of harm's way, and there is an extensive network of underground subways and other shelters that can be accessed to reduce remaining exposures. Military planners have updated data I am not privy to, but these estimates are not likely far wrong.

The North Korean artillery pieces capable of reaching South Korea’s capital are the 175mm Koksan self-propelled guns, the M240mm Multiple Rocket Launcher and the newly unveiled 300mm MLR. The later platform can reach below the top third of Seoul but is not yet widely deployed. It soon will be so the longer an evacuation is delayed, the more people will be exposed to these new guns making an evacuation task harder.

One civilian analyst writes: “Artillery shelters for twenty million people exist in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. After the initial surprise [of a North Korean attack] has worn off, there simply won’t be large numbers of exposed people.” If those in the northern third of Seoul and those in the cities and hamlets north of that city have left, Kim Jong Un’s vaunted conventional artillery will have far fewer hostages, and those that remain will be undertaking the risk by choice. Given an option and adequate resources to relocate, the remaining citizens will look to North Korea more like those in the path of a hurricane who refuse to leave and rather less like Kim’s hostages.

Massive But Not the First. As daunting as an evacuation of 10 million people may be, it is not unprecedented. About 14 million Chinese were evacuated from flooding in north China in 1998. In 1971, 18 million people moved from Bangladesh to India to escape Pakistan forces. In 2005, 3 million were evacuated in Texas and Louisiana due to Hurricane Rita.

Recently, the Russians appear to be evacuating 1,500 people from the northern North Korean border near Vladivostok. North Korea will wonder at a much larger companion action in the south letting the North Korean military know, even if the boss does not, that things have changed.

Seeing his hostage pool melt away may also concentrate the mind of the dictator himself. Simply an announcement of a planned evacuation may alter negotiating dynamics, and if implemented, the steady drip, drip drip of evacuees leaving Kim’s gunsights may get serious discussions for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula finally underway.

Where Will They Go? Since the people evacuating their homes would be doing so not only for themselves but also for the greater good of reducing the world’s chances of another nuclear war, they should receive unprecedented international support. Countries should volunteer to assist relocating significant numbers of those who wish to leave. Some relocations would be temporary, some permanent and the costs, whatever they may be, would be comparatively reasonable for an action that contributes to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula or avoids the second use of nuclear weapons on the globe.

The size of the evacuation means it will proceed slowly giving South Korea and her allies ample opportunity to plan and assist the displaced as the North Korean regime contemplates the implications of such an action. The US could take the lead by temporarily accommodating the relocation of hundreds of thousands either financially in the south, in neighboring countries, and even to US soil. Allies would be asked to do the same. Over time, millions could leave the area until the conventional forces of North Korea had virtually no one to shoot at.

Chinese Intrigue. Will this enormous civil undertaking concentrate Chinese minds? The threat of North Korean civilian refugees streaming across the Chinese border is said to explain Chinese inertia on dealing with North Korean intransigence. To the extent the Chinese see a South Korean evacuation effort as a prelude to a military strike that intransigence may melt. Part of the project could be to place large-scale marine transport capability to evacuate refugees across the Yellow Sea to the relative safety of mainland China if war breaks out. This would put a certain symmetry in play, instead of only worrying about thousands of North Koreans streaming across their border with North Korea, the Chinese must consider that there may be hundreds of thousands of South Koreans taking to pre-positioned transports to get to the China coast. The Chinese leadership may focus less on the north and more on their coastlines in the south.

The sixth North Korean nuclear test means things are about to change in this saga. An evacuation option could add an effective, non-lethal arrow to the allies’ diplomatic quiver. However, if a massive drawdown of civilians from Seoul does not succeed in changing North Korean minds on serious negotiations for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, any military confrontation that erupts will result in far fewer South Korean deaths.

Mark Mackie is former Chief Counsel for the US Senate Committee on Rules with an MA in international affairs from the University of Reading, England and now practices law in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

A Grand Bargain on Tax Reform and Climate Change from www.realclearpolitics.com

December 10, 2014

Tax Reform: Consumption and Carbon

Incoming congressional leaders have placed reform of "the insanely complex [income] tax code" at the top of their to-do list, but the only thing more complex than this code may be its reform. Here's a proposal that reaches far beyond anything under consideration on the Hill -- and could be easier to enact.

The grand bargain: Junking virtually the entire personal and corporate tax regime, Congress embraces a consumption tax coupled with a carbon/methane tax -- via constitutional amendment. The new federal tax system would consist of a VAT or retail consumption tax set at about 10 to 20 percent of the value of all goods and services sold in the U.S., with a carbon/methane tax add-on of perhaps 2 to 10 percent. If the plan fell short of replacing current revenues, income above a given amount would be taxed at a flat rate of 3 to 15 percent to make up the difference.

In exchange for applying the carbon and consumption brakes favored by the Left, the Right would get a constitutional amendment that would keep Congress from inflating the rates set by the original bill. States would have to ratify (a) a repeal of the 16th Amendment (income tax) and (b) a cap on consumption-tax rates at the percentages specified by Congress. Emergency assessments could breach the rate caps by supermajority congressional votes and would automatically lapse, say in six months, unless supermajorities subsequently voted to continue them.

A spillover flat tax, if needed, would apply only over a congressionally specified level of income, e.g. $70,000, with no other deductions. For those squeamish about enshrining a tax regime in the Constitution, note that federal tax law and rules now exceed 50,000 pages; our bet is that the country has had its belly full of such tripe and would gladly chuck it for perhaps ten paragraphs in the Constitution.

Goody Bag For the Left: You'd get a tax system that penalized consumption with an overlay of carbon taxes in a mixture you helped craft (because constitutional amendments require congressional supermajorities). Widespread replacement of carbon fuel by renewables would be assured. Not only would the new regime drive carbon and methane emissions radically down in the U.S., but a move toward what economists call Pigovian taxes (i.e., penalizing harmful activities) could help us lead the way to worldwide pollution reductions. President Obama's newly minted commitment in China could easily be met without singling out coal. At home, you would have a seat at the table to set the progressivity of exemptions for low-income citizens from the consumption taxes (certainly essential groceries, some housing, and fuel) and rebates for low-income individuals that could approximate or exceed the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Goody Bag For the Right: You don't have to accept a single conclusion of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for this deal to make sense to you; in terms of efficiency and enhancing investment, limited consumption taxes beat unconstrained income taxes on almost every front and have a weighty conservative pedigree (e.g., President Reagan pushed use taxes). Carbon taxes that are revenue-neutral get good reviews too: See G. Mankiw and A. Laffer. A bonus: The IRS Ring Wraiths will be thrown from their steeds, crippling their ability to harass the free speech of ordinary Americans. Double bonus: Wildcatters may howl, but these taxes will defund and defang Mideast satraps and Russian belligerents faster than any conceivable near-term American policy.

By sending this amendment to the states for ratification, every Senate and House member in these debates would be going big, setting before statehouses the chance to deliberate climate change and the abolition of the IRS at the same time.

We wonder how that will go.

Mark Mackie is former chief counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and practices law in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. John Campbell is also a former congressional staffer and was a deputy undersecretary of agriculture for George H.W. Bush; he is now an investment banker for agricultural concerns in Omaha, Neb.

Campaign Finance Legislation in the US Senate

Attached are the views I wrote for the opposition in the Senate to a Campaign Finance bill. Click here to see the VIEWS. Sadly, even though this is an old bill, many of the problems outlined here, especially the unfair advantage incumbents enjoy in federal elections, are still with us.